50 years a physiotherapist
Introduction
Twelve years ago, on the occasion of my 50 years of being a physiotherapist, I made a review of the ups and downs of our fine profession. It disappeared into a drawer of my desk. Some colleagues and former patients urged me to pull it out again. Nowadays, of course, things have changed but the intention has remained for me. And it might be fun to read it anyway.
1 June 2011 was the day. On that date, I had been a physiotherapist for 50 years. How did it all start? Has our profession changed? Is it still fun?
I was born a 'leap child'. 29 February 1936, a fine vintage year. For my parents and family, the event was a nice gift. Just a bright spot in a world that was especially unsettled in Germany. Even frightening for many.
I grew up in a nice environment. My own room, lots of toys and a mum and dad who spoiled me very much. Unfortunately, I would not get a sibling. No, I would stay alone. But then really all alone. In 1942, my parents were transported via Westerbork to Auschwitz, where they were gassed, murdered along with thousands of others.
I survived the war by being able to go into hiding at nine different addresses. I returned to Amsterdam after the war as an asthmatic, small, scared boy. Four years behind my peers. But it all worked out in the end*.
I attended Dongeschool in Amsterdam. A nice primary school where I not only learned to do maths and read, but also learned to play. Something I was never allowed or able to do during the war. This was followed by the Amsterdam Lyceum, to end up at the Second Public Trade School ( the OHS). That turned out to be a wrong choice. Not that the school wasn't good or fun, on the contrary. After all, I wanted to become a doctor. But there was no Greek and Latin in my package. So I went into 'commerce'. I received training at the well-known timber trade Ambagtsheer and van der Meulen as assistant manager. Between eighty purebred Amsterdammers in the timber port, I was well schooled. In all areas.
Salo Muller His period in hiding, the years at Ajax and his fight against the NS
Summary
Softcover, 344 pages, trilogy with two previously published books and a new story. Account of a Jewish boy in hiding. As an adult, he tackles the Dutch Railways.
Reflections on my life's journey
In old age, Salo Muller looks back over the past with a dominant place for the war past, as a Holocaust survivor. Both his parents and most of his family perished in Auschwitz.
The battle with the Dutch railways
The lonely struggle of a Holocaust survivor who began a personal crusade against the powerful Dutch Railways with which both his parents were deported. Train tickets paid for by the Jewish citizens from whom everything was taken away. With the credo: 'I do it for you, papa and mama!' The personal crusade became a claim for damages for all Dutch victims and totalled 50 million euros. (previously published 2020)
See you tonight and be nice! War memories
The last words Salo heard as a six-year-old child from his mother when she dropped him off at kindergarten; in the fateful war year of 1942. From that year, Salo went into hiding at nine addresses after being rescued from the kindergarten at the Hollandsche Schouwburg. (2005, 2014)
Salo Muller His period in hiding, the years at Ajax and his fight against the NS
'Salo Muller's life story, as heartbreaking as it is hopeful, is wonderfully compelling to read.'
Claudia de Breij
Cruelly, six-year-old Salo Muller is separated from his parents in 1942 after a raid - they would be murdered in Auschwitz in 1943. A journey of survival takes him through nine hiding addresses.
It is admirable how Salo Muller manages to shape his life after the war. At the age of twenty-two, he starts his career as a physiotherapist at top club Ajax, where he starts working with luminaries such as Rinus Michels and Johan Cruijff. In his own physiotherapy practice, he treats a large number of top athletes and (inter)national celebrities. He is generally regarded as the pioneer in the field of sports physiotherapy.
In 2018, Salo Muller manages to enforce a compensation scheme for Jewish war victims with Dutch Railways. Following this unprecedented success, he goes on to fight the German government and railways for apologies and financial compensation. His relentless fight against injustice can be an inspiring example to many.
'Salo is a special person.'
Job Cohen
'The inspiring biography shows that Salo is a tactical warrior and a winner.'
Louis van Gaal
'Great respect because he delivered a solo fight.'
Roger van Boxtel, former NS chief executive officer
'Salo was a great physiotherapist and empathetic listener.'
Monique van de Ven, former patient
'On the massage bench, Salo was our confidant.'
Ruud Krol, former Ajax footballer
Book - Salo Muller's battle with the Dutch Railways; the lonely struggle of a Holocaust survivor
Introduction
On Friday 11 September 2020, the book launch of Salo Muller's The Fight with the Dutch Railways took place in private at the Johan Cruijff Arena. On this occasion, Femke Halsema, mayor of Amsterdam, royally decorated Salo Muller with a degree in the Order of Orange Nassau. He received this award as a reward for his efforts to negotiate an individual allowance from the Dutch Railways as compensation for the NS's deportation of Jews during the Holocaust.
During the book launch, Salo Muller presented a copy of the book to Roger van Boxtel, chief executive officer of Dutch Railways, and Job Cohen, chairman of the Committee on Individual Compensation for Victims of WWII Transport NS.
Book
It started as a personal crusade and became a claim for damages for all Dutch victims of the Holocaust transported by the Dutch Railways to Westerbork and from Westerbork to the German border on their way to concentration and extermination camps in Germany and Poland.
Salo Muller is tenacious when it comes to the legacy of his parents killed in Auschwitz. As a little boy, he was in hiding at various addresses and survived the Nazi terror. He wrote about this in his war memories Until tonight and be nice! His parents were rounded up and deported and died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. More than a hundred thousand other Dutch Jewish victims met a similar fate in Auschwitz, Sobibor or another camp. The cost of the train ticket from the Dutch Railways - they only got a single ticket - they had to pay themselves or were paid from looted Jewish assets. Blood money?
When the French railways moved to award compensation, Salo Muller tied up with Dutch Railways. And although he initially had to fight the battle alone, he managed to bring the NS to its knees and negotiated individual compensation for all surviving Jewish victims of the Dutch Holocaust.
Wed - November 2020 - Interview with Salo Muller
Salo Muller (Amsterdam, 1936), Ajax physiotherapist from 1960 to 1972, wrote several books and successfully fought for NS compensation for Shoah victims. He was recently promoted to officer in the order of Oranje-Nassau.
My mother I see in front of me every day
"The vicar of the Frisian village where I was in hiding as a six-year-old boy said: 'Japje - that was my pseudonym, Japje Mulder - if you pray hard enough, God will make sure your parents come back'. I did that, on my knees, every night before going to bed, until the day - two years after the war - when I received a letter from the Red Cross: 'We regret to inform you that your parents have died'. Deceased. It really did say. They didn't just die, they were gassed. In Auschwitz. My mother on 12 February 1943, my father a few months later, on 30 April. I think it's brave, if you dare to say that God intended to take your loved ones to Himself; if your faith is so strong that you can accept something so horrible, but I can't. I cannot believe in a God who approves of the bestial slaughter of millions of people.
And if my parents had survived the war? That's a good question... Then the impossible would have happened and God had to exist. And then there would have been a religious man sitting opposite you right now."
Het Parool - July 25, 2020 - Interview with Salo Muller
Since the shock of World War II, "when I was rounded up by angry men in black clothes and thrown into a truck", Salo Muller fears no one. "But I do fear corona." That is why the Jewish Ajax attendant of yesteryear and the injustice fighter who brought NS to its knees largely prefers isolation. "I have no use for people who say, 'Come on kid, it's over now anyway'. 0 yes? I happen to know four people, here in Amsterdam, who were so into it and are now ill." Muller is quite willing to talk about "the confusion of this particular time", about his life, about THE life and about his revamped collection of stories from the practice of fifty years of physiotherapy: Exposed. Muller: "OK, we meet up, but you don't come into our house." His wife Conny and he even keep their son and daughter plus grandchildren at bay. "We want nothing more than to hug them, but we think it's too dangerous. I am 84 and I have asthma." Muller receives in the Gijsbrecht van Aemstel Park, near his flat in Buitenveldert. "Here it's nice and quiet," he says, gesturing to two empty benches next to each other. "You the one, me the other bench. We could stay here talking for hours."
It must be a horror for the man who was so abruptly and utterly deprived of his freedom as a child to be locked up at home. "It is, but I in no way associate this corona time with the war. That was one big horror, this is more a period of discomfort." Still, today's time worries Muller, and not just because of the erratic and dangerous virus that may be the harbinger of even more contagion misery. Salo is also apprehensive about "the overreaching government", which is overshooting the corona approach. "There are so many rules being promulgated that it erodes democracy. It is too much: you have to do this and are no longer allowed to do that. Freedom is curtailed too emphatically." He is also uncomfortable with the overheating in the discrimination debate. "It's all too fierce for me. I listen to it and think: stop exaggerating. Don't shout that you will hit the other person in the mouth because you don't like what he says. I find the tone ominous. I love macaroons, but at the bakery I am already afraid to ask for them. 'Can I have two of those there?' I asked the other day. Said the saleswoman: 'Do you mean the tompoucs or the sprinkles?' That was a bit of a laugh then."
Protest at Dam Square
It is right, Muller says, that unconscious and latent racism should be questioned. "But why suddenly so aggressive? It also bothered me that Rutte said that Zwarte Piet is now Zwarte Piet and that he should stay that way. That the prime minister was then brought to a different understanding with arguments is nice. That's how it should be: change as the outcome of a public debate. That is so much better than destruction by a wild iconoclasm. Not destruction, but change." Thousands spontaneously marching up Dam Square to condemn discrimination, Muller looked up and he also thought for a moment: why don't Jewish youths ever stand there to denounce the racism against them? Because that is perhaps Muller's biggest concern, the flare-up of anti-Semitism. "It saddens me to hear young Jewish people say that they are considering leaving, that their future is no longer here. They are fucking Dutch and feel threatened in their own country. If that's not worrying.
" That the Jewish restaurant HaCarmel on Amstelveenseweg has been besieged four times in just over two years frustrates Muller. "Smashing the windows of Jews, that's just 1939 huh. It's bad that something like that happens, and it's just as bad that it can repeat itself because the mayor doesn't do anything about it. Yes, Halsema went there for dinner once to show that she is sorry too. But she has to protect that business, provide surveillance." Does Muller know why it is that there are not also mass demonstrations against anti-Semitism on Dam Square? "No, not actually, but I do know that many Jews prefer not to put too much emphasis on being Jewish. That's what caused the Shoah. After the war, a lot of Jews no longer wanted to be Jewish. They wanted to live in the shadows, to have peace. Jewish people became more sensitive, more anxious." According to Muller, Jewish discomfort is also the reason why the mezuzah, the traditional text box, is increasingly missing from the doorpost of Jewish homes. And it may also be the reason that Dam Square does not fill up with outraged Jews.
Roxeanne Hazes in conversation with war survivor Salo Muller
A dream came true for Roxeanne Hazes, when she was appointed ambassador of freedom. Yet performing at the Liberation Festivals is unfortunately not in the cards, so she gives her ambassadorship an entirely personal interpretation.

Committee on Individual Compensation for Victims of WWII Transport NS
Request
From 5 August 2019 to 5 August 2020, you can apply for an individual allowance via committee-measurements.com/application-form
Contact
Do you have questions about the advice or application? On the website - committee-measurements.co.uk - you will find an overview of frequently asked questions and their answers. If your question is not listed and you have a question about the advice or application, please contact us at 088 - 7926250.
Accessibility
From 1 to 9 August, the helpdesk will be available from 10:00 to 14:00. After this period, the helpdesk will be available on weekdays from 10:00 to 12:00.
Book : Exposed
Available since 30-04-2020
Salo Muller made a familiar appearance during Ajax's Golden Years as the successful team's regular physiotherapist. Footballers like Cruijff, Keizer, Swart and Neeskens all ended up on his massage table. His practice on Amsterdam's De Lairessestraat, one of the most frequented in the Netherlands, was not only home to footballers, by the way. Actors, artists, escort girls and men with guns, they all let themselves be treated by Salo.
"The profession of physiotherapy really doesn't just consist of massaging and giving exercises. There is much more to it. Listening is perhaps 60% of therapy."
In this book, Muller describes the personality and the sometimes aberrant behaviour of his patients with a great deal of understanding, tolerance and compassion. He possesses the ability to see in his patients not only a problem, but has an open eye for the whole person. The stories in Exposed hold up a mirror to us.
Since his retirement, Salo has been travelling the country giving lectures to young and old alike, with stories of how he shaped his life after going into hiding and losing his family during the Holocaust.
Available from: Bol.com
Salo Muller
Salo Muller was the son of Lena Blitz (Amsterdam, 20-10-1908) and Louis Muller (Amsterdam, 20-7-1903). Both worked at De Vries van Buuren & Co, a textile company on Jodenbreestraat. The family lived at Molenbeekstraat 34 in Amsterdam. Salo went into hiding in World War II as a Jewish child from 1941 after being rescued from the crèche in the Amsterdam Schouwburg. He was in hiding at eight addresses, including in Koog aan de Zaan and especially Friesland, where he was called Japje. Both his parents perished in the Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz.
see you tonight and be nice
After the war
The hiding parents who took young Salo under their wing for a year and a half, Klaas Vellinga and Pietje Heddema-Bos, were honoured with a Yad Vashem medal of honour in 2008. When the war was over, he was brought back to Amsterdam by his aunt. There, as a 10-year-old, he had some adjustment problems and did not finish high school. After being expelled from the lyceum, he eventually ended up at a course for remedial gymnast/masseur. His teacher, Mr Rodenburg, was an Ajax carer and was impressed by Muller. Through Rodenburg, Salo Muller joined Ajax as an assistant and, from 1960, as a physiotherapist.
Klaas Vellinga and Pietje Heddema-Bos, were honoured with a medal of honour from Yad Vashem in 2008
De Volkskrant - 'The Dutch are nice, ordinary people. But it is true that 80 per cent were on the wrong side'
As a child, Salo Muller (83), a former Ajax physiotherapist, was in hiding with host families; his parents were murdered in Auschwitz. 'I still assume Germans are not pro-Jewish.'
Zith his own parents were on the train to Westerbork. But that is not why Salo Muller (83) kept going until he got the NS to pay compensation to the Jews, Roma and Sinti who were transported to the camp during World War II. 'I am a pit bull. If I want something, I will go through hoops. In case of an unjustified fine, I also go to court.'
Salo Muller | Image © Ernst Coppejans
About Salo
Holocaust
Holocaust survivor - Salo's painful childhood was a major influence on the rest of his life. "I suffered from extreme separation anxiety, especially at European away games with the golden Ajax of Rinus Michels, Piet Keizer and Johan Cruijff." To this day, Salo walks around asking "How could this have happened?" About his experiences during the war years, he wrote the book See you tonight and be nice. These were the last words his mother spoke to him as she dropped him off at kindergarten. That day she was rounded up by the Germans. In the Hollandse Schouwburg, he did see them briefly after which they never returned.
Speaker
As speaker, Salo Muller frequently recounts his childhood years during the war and his later work as a physiotherapist at Ajax. Via Stichting Schoolbuurtwerk, Salo Muller gives guest lessons at schools in Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and other cities in the Netherlands in the context of remembrance and celebration. In addition, Salo Muller is affiliated as a guest speaker with the National Support Centre for Guest Speakers of WWII and connected to the Remembrance Centre Camp Westerbork (eyewitnesses in the classroom).
Author
Salo Muller is one of those magical names from the past, from the long-forgotten days when Ajax was and could rightfully be a Jewish club. Jaap van Praag presided, Bennie Muller and Sjaak Swart paved the way to success and Salo Muller kneaded their legs. Until 1972, Muller (1936) was a physiotherapist at Ajax. After winning the European Cup (the first in a series of three), an internal conflict led to his departure. About his years at the massage table, Muller has written a book under the telling title My Ajax. About his sad memories of the occupation years, he wrote Until tonight and be nice, hear.
Ex-physio Ajax
Salo Muller remained attached to Ajax until 1972. He witnessed the rise of the team to its golden years. Salo Muller was there when Ajax won the European Cup I and, in addition to being a masseur, acted as a discussion partner for all the players. After the second European Cup win in 1972, Salo Muller clashed with Ajax over his salary and duties, and resigned from the club. He always remained a loyal supporter and was known to be proud of Ajaxb's Jewish image. Salo Muller later wrote the book My Ajax about his time at Ajax.
Biography
Salo Muller (Amsterdam, 29 February 1936) is a Dutch physiotherapist, journalist and publicist. He became best known as a physiotherapist with AFC Ajax.
Salo Muller was the son of Lena Blitz (Amsterdam, 20-10-1908) and Louis Muller (Amsterdam, 20-7-1903). Salo went into hiding in World War II as a Jewish child from 1942 after being rescued from the crèche in the Amsterdam Schouwburg. Both his parents perished in the Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz. About his experiences during the war years, he wrote the book 'Till tonight and be nice hear'. These were the last words his mother spoke to him when she dropped him off at nursery school.
When the war was over, he was brought back to Amsterdam by his aunt. There, as a ten-year-old, he had some adjustment problems and did not finish high school. After being expelled from the lyceum, he eventually ended up at a course for remedial gymnast/masseur. His teacher, Mr Rodenburg, was an Ajax carer and was impressed by Muller. Through Rodenburg, Muller joined Ajax as an assistant and, from 1960, as a physiotherapist. Salo Muller remained with Ajax until 1972. He witnessed the team's rise to the golden years. He was there when Ajax won the European Cup I and, in addition to being a masseur, acted as an interlocutor for all the players.
After Ajax, he focused on building up his physiotherapy practice. He was also editor-in-chief of the physiotherapy magazine Fysioscoop for 30 years and wrote two books on injuries. In 2006, he published his book Mijn Ajax, about his experiences at Ajax between 1969 and 1972. In 2007, he published Blootgeven, a book about his work as a physiotherapist. In it, Muller describes many of his special patients.
Lectures
Lectures for companies
From hiding and having lost almost his entire family during the Holocaust, Salo shaped his life and was part of Ajax's great success in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He gives customised lectures, depending on the wishes of the company or organisation.
Lectures for Schools
Through Stichting Schoolbuurtwerk, he gives guest lectures at schools in Amsterdam in the context of remembrance and celebration (www.schoolbuurtwerk.nl) . Salo is also affiliated as a guest speaker of the Landelijk Steunpunt Gastsprekers WOII-heden connected to the Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork (eyewitnesses in the classroom). (www.steunpuntgastsprekers.nl)
In the media
Treatment

Peacock & Witteman

War memories

Amsterdam Lyceum

For the first time, NS will pay individual compensation to Holocaust survivors and relatives. This puts an end to the battle between Salo Muller and the railway company. Muller accuses NS of making millions from transporting Jews to Westerbork during World War II.
"We have jointly decided not to come to a legal stand-off, but to set up a committee," said Roger van Boxtel, NS chief executive, following today's consultation with Muller. "That committee will figure out how we can shape an individual compensation to those affected."
Link to NOS
"It is wonderful news," said the chairman of the Dutch Auschwitz Committee, Jacques Grishaver on the decision that the NS will pay individual compensation to Holocaust survivors and relatives. "It is good that it has been resolved this way, because it was an unsavoury affair. This gesture shows a piece of recognition."
A committee will find out how many people can claim compensation. Grishaver: "I hope the committee is formed soon and gets to work. Every day, people die who have experienced it themselves. It should all not take too long now."
Link to NOS
The man, who after a years-long battle against the NS managed to get the railway company to pay compensation to Holocaust survivors and relatives, was in hiding in Friesland during World War II. Salo Muller is his name, but during the war they called him Japje.
The NS transported more than 100,000 Jews during the war, at the behest of the German occupiers. They died in concentration camps. The railway company allegedly made millions from this. The company will now pay individual compensation to victims and relatives of the Holocaust.
Link to Omrop Fryslan
The NS is to pay compensation to Holocaust survivors and relatives for the first time. The decision follows a dispute between the NS and Salo Muller (82), whose parents were murdered in Auschwitz. Muller accuses the railway company of earning millions during the war from transporting Jews to Westerbork camp, a gateway on the way to the Nazis' death camps.
An NS committee will consider on moral grounds who will be compensated and how. 'We have jointly decided not to come to a legal standoff,' chief executive Roger van Boxtel told the TV programme Nieuwsuur on Tuesday. Muller, a former Ajax physiotherapist, demanded last year that NS pay compensation to Holocaust victims and their relatives.
Link to Volkskrant
During World War II, hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Netherlands paid for the train, operated by the Dutch state-run company NS, which later deported to them death camps. The parents of Holocaust survivor Salo Muller were on one of those trains.
After seeing France's rail company, SNCF, pay a compensation fund to Jewish survivors in the United States, Muller decided to act. He met with the director of NS and discussed performing a similar action for Jewish families in the Netherlands.
Link to Pri.org
Salo Muller: 'By spring NS must have paid compensation'. NS must pay financial compensation to victims and relatives of the Holocaust by this spring. A committee should be appointed this year to oversee this. So says Salo Muller, who has spent 2.5 years pinning his hopes on Dutch Railways, in the radio programme 1op1.
Link to Radio 1
At Salo Muller (82), the personal reactions are pouring in. Via e-mail, via Facebook, via cards to flowers. He sometimes bristles at them. "People probably thought I had long since quit after all this time, but yesterday I suddenly came up with the news: guys, I did it!"
After years of struggle, Muller has agreed a settlement with the NS. The railway company will pay individual compensation to Holocaust survivors and relatives. During World War II, the NS transported Jews to Westerbork and made money from it.
Link to NOS
The NS is going to pay compensation to (children of) Holocaust victims 'for moral-ethical reasons'. Salo Muller (82), whose parents were transported by the NS to Westerbork camp in 1942 and then gassed in Auschwitz, fought the railways for almost three years. 'I didn't expect them to change tack.'
Link to Volkskrant
Both organisations do, however, urge haste. "Hopefully it will happen soon, because the survivors are getting older and so there are fewer and fewer of them," said Auschwitz Committee chairman Jacques Grishaver.
Grishaver says he can only applaud the compensation. "Muller has done that beautifully," he says referring to Salo Muller, a Holocaust survivor.
Link to Parole